Friday, July 13, 2012

Fix Your Credit While Avoiding Rip Off Credit Repair Companies

Bad credit can simply paralyze your life. You can't get a loan for the car you want and you may not even be able to get a simple credit card. To make things worse, there are people out there who will try to scam you by saying they will repair your credit problems, as long as you can scrap together the money to pay an upfront fee. Luckily, there are ways to check and make sure you are not about to be a victim.

Any company asking you to put down an upfront fee for their credit repair services is suspicious to begin with, especially if they do not tell you exactly what they are going to do for you beforehand. Some of these charlatans will just tell you to contest all of the negative accounts on your credit report, even the ones that are valid. This isn't ethical. Others will tell you that you should set up a fake credit alias to start bringing in some credit, but that is illegal.

Any credit repair service that promises to do something that you cannot do yourself, for free, is a fraud. Services that promise to contact creditors on your behalf can provide quicker results, particularly if they are attorneys. However, if they say they can magically make your credit problems disappear in, say, 90 days, for a fee, then you need to run.

The best way to repair your credit is to look at your report. A lot of times, there really are negative entries that should not be there. Take the time to contact the companies and contest them. Legitimate enterprises will comply, although it can take 30 to 90 days. Then, talk to some of your creditors and see if they will delete your entries if you pay in full. A deletion will instantly raise your credit score, while a paid in full account will raise it a little -- but the account stays on the report. If you can negotiate a deletion, then your score will go up more quickly.

Repairing credit takes a lot of time, especially if you are new to the process. You'll spend a lot of time on hold, and you'll spend a lot of time dealing with people who are not really interested in helping you unless you can pay everything up front. Having someone take care of this for you can save you some time and resolve things more quickly. It can definitely be worth the money, especially if you have someone who is respected in the industry.

You may hear that you have to wait 7 years to get negative items off your credit report. This is true, but a lot of the time if you have no negative items in the last six months, or especially a year, your credit report will improve substantially.

There are a lot of ways to help yourself out as far as a credit score does. Don't sign up with a firm of crooks; find a legitimate business to help you out.

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